


Party of Two

by deceptigeek



Series: Christmas giftfics 2019... Now in August! [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Political Dynasties, Anakin Skywalker (mentioned) - Freeform, Established Relationship, F/M, Han Solo (Mentioned) - Freeform, Luke Skywalker (Mentioned) - Freeform, Padmé Amidala (mentioned) - Freeform, Poe Dameron (Mentioned) - Freeform, Secret Relationship, attempting to do something actually entertaining with the Rey Palpatine thing, found family dynamics (for Rey and Finn), found hot mess dynamics (for Rey and Ben), lots of loredumping, small mentions of violence/gore, very haphazard murder plots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:02:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27269176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deceptigeek/pseuds/deceptigeek
Summary: Rey Palpatine has never felt comfortable nor safe in the world of the Senate; neither, improbably, has Ben Solo, despite his exalted heritage. They've been meeting, in secret, away from it all, for a reason - so their paths crossing publicly, especially with Rey's grandfather looming nearby, brings a fair share of squashed feelings bubbling to the surface.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Christmas giftfics 2019... Now in August! [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591342
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	Party of Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheNumberFour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNumberFour/gifts).



> This was supposed to be a Christmas giftfic from LAST YEAR so... yeah. That worked out super well. 
> 
> The basic gist of this AU is that I wanted to try and make the whole Rey Palpatine thing fun, instead of naff at best. So to accomplish that, things took a bit of a turn at the end of Phantom Menace, and spawned a timeline where all the main players are still closely linked to the Senate, which remained more or less intact. I'll let you discover the particulars of that 'more or less' as you read though, cause I don't want to spoil the surprise. 
> 
> In other words - Rey and Ben are both rebellious socialites from very prestigious political families. And they're sneaking around with each other. Enjoy!

It takes almost half an hour before he actually spots her, but once he does, it’s impossible to look away. She’s been bullied out of her usual practical garb and bundled into a flowing evening gown, replete with cloak: the stormy grey colour, high neckline, and slicked-back hair without a single stray wisp make her seem, for once, every inch the product of her high-born heritage, and Ben couldn’t lie to himself even if he wanted to. She’s stunning. 

She also looks incredibly pissed off. 

If he’s still being honest, that doesn’t exactly detract from the overall effect. 

* * *

  
  
Rey catches sight of Ben pretty much as soon as she enters the party, and can’t decide whether she likes what she sees, or if his supreme, obvious awkwardness is enough to ruin it. 

Formal Naboo robes _are_ a good look on him: the heavy, dark fabric smooths all the places where he sticks out at odd angles, and his perpetual seriousness seems almost intentional, now, with the gravitas his attire lends him. She doesn’t doubt that he fought the ornate gold embroidery with claws and bared teeth, but personally can’t bring herself to dislike it. A childhood spent clambering around Coruscant, seeking out entertainment away from her grandfather’s disinterested gaze, means that Rey’s fingers have always been drawn to pluck at shiny things. 

Their eyes don’t meet until seven and a half minutes later (not that she means to count, but growing up in the businesslike boredom of Sheev Palpatine’s house does that to a girl). This is technically by her design, but really more of an unfortunate side-effect - it’s easier to split off and stick to the wall, avoiding unwanted conversation, when you’re from a political dynasty of two rather than the glittering, intricate, intriguing Amidala clan and their assorted hangers-on. 

For Rey, pretty much all conversation at these events is unwanted, so she makes every effort to stay out of view. Not least because this dress makes her look far too much like the sort of successor her grandfather wants; the sort of person she never wants to be. She’s new to Coruscant society at large, and the shaping of her image to these specifications is deliberate. The fewer people she can make her introductions to when this is their impression of her, the better. 

Luckily for her, Vice-Chancellor Palpatine is much too preoccupied with his own machinations this evening to keep an eye on Rey’s absolutely blossoming political career. Ben isn’t so fortunate: trapped at the centre of the room by all the attention being lavished on his grandmother, her children, even the family’s strange choices of in-laws. 

Rey’s heard the stories about Anakin - everyone has. There’s the scandal the twins were born into, which he took the brunt of the blame for, despite it being obvious that his particular transgression could only have been the work of two people. But better for the then-new and shaky balance of power, that responsibility should fall on an easily disgraced - and dismissed - impetuous young Jedi… especially when that Jedi, it was revealed, hadn’t really come to the Order through the _proper_ channels in the first place. 

Besides, a story of young, foolish love had been a breath of fresh air, compared to the sort of corruption the Coruscanti were used to. 

Less wholesome, and less widely known, is something Rey found out by accident and eavesdropping: Ben’s grandfather was closely connected to her own at some point in the past, and that’s about as damning a character reference as anyone could present to her. 

But association with beloved Queen-Turned-Senator-Turned-Chancellor Padmé Amidala Naberrie is a hell of a drug, where Coruscant society is concerned. 

Especially society of the higher kind. To Rey, it feels like any time these princes and politicians step into the Chancellor’s orbit, all the sins of the past melt from their memories, returning only when they slink back to the corners of the ballroom to gossip. Even the ex-smuggler (well, ‘ex’-smuggler) isn’t immune. By some strange sociopolitical alchemy, Amidala’s righteous aura has become so powerful that it envelops - or, some might say, consumes - the clan’s weak points, and is able to cushion most blows aimed at them.

Ben, somehow, has never quite been touched by this effect - and though he’s done precious little with his life full stop, save a bit of rumoured unauthorised training with his not-quite-a-Jedi uncle, the same crowd who twitter and flutter around the rest of his family never seem to know what to do with him. 

Rey knows what she’d like to do with him. When those deep, dark eyes finally snap towards hers, she raises her glass mockingly. 

_A toast, to those of us who’d rather be anywhere but here._

_And who can probably think of a few better suggestions for passing time right off the bat._

He raises an eyebrow, as though he knows exactly what she’s thinking. It’s strange, sometimes, just how much they seem to understand each other - more so than simply being an alliance of outsiders should afford them. 

Though to be fair, in situations like this, their goals usually align _very_ neatly. 

Across the room, Ben returns Rey’s salute with his own drink, before taking a deep draught, his gaze never leaving hers. 

The first time she’d seen those eyes had been in the Senate’s atrium: two black pits in a pale face, which in turn was almost shrouded by the shadows behind a pillar. He’d mistaken her for some ragged low-life who’d suck her way in, warned her off - then smiled, slightly, when she tried and failed to casually namedrop her lineage. At the time, she’d thought he was just being a smug asshole… which was absolutely true, but now she knows his eyes had taken her in with no small amount of recognition. 

After that, they just kept running into each other. 

It began in places that any reporter who caught wind could hardly raise an objection to, and ended in ones where nobody would recognise them anyway. From crossed paths in corridors between their esteemed relations’ offices, Rey dragged Ben up to the deserted rooftop haunts she’d discovered, or down to her favourite bars - ones she’s sure her grandfather would wish her dead in if he caught her, even though she’s equally certain several of the landlords are on his payroll. Ben, in turn, introduced her to illicit brawling arenas, hosted in out-of-the-way, abandoned industrial facilities. 

As a pair, they blended in surprisingly well; Ben, for all his looming height, has a skill at flying under the radar that being the son of a known criminal affords, while ‘unassuming’ could be called Rey’s natural state, until it’s too late and she’s already been riled up. And once she _is_ riled up, people are generally too distracted by their fear for important body parts, to wonder if they’ve seen her face before. 

When she’d phrased it like that to him, Ben had laughed at the notion that she’d ever stoop to cutting off anyone’s anything. She’d argued that apart from anything else, the _threat_ was the important bit nine times out of ten, then sliced her opponent’s arm open pit to wrist in her next fight, with a knife she’d hidden in her boot.

That evening, Rey narrowed down which window of the Amidala mansion belonged to Ben, and climbed through it for the first time. 

He’s used to her visits by now, but she still savours the memory of just how much that initial intrusion had startled him. As well as the memory of what came after, of course.

Now, watching Rey as she clings to the wall, Ben seems to sense, once more, where her mind has wandered. A second eyebrow joins the first, and he draws himself up, making use of his height in a way he’s rarely seen to, purely so he can look down his nose at her. She knows what he’s thinking. 

_Lady Rey, where’s your sense of decorum?_

Rey pulls a face at him. He pulls one back, before glancing around shiftily to check that nobody’s noticed. 

That’s the unfortunate part about seeing each other here. Make any one step too obvious, or slip while you take it, and suddenly a good chunk of Coruscant’s most preeminent and powerful know about your affair. 

They’ve both agreed that if anyone were to find out, it’d spell their end; this thing they have is as good as it is because it belongs to them and nobody else, save rooftops and rusting factory walkways - and anyone who happens to spot them in a grubby, rowdy crush of people, perceiving nothing more than two idiots who can’t keep their hands off each other. 

The Coruscanti elite - worse, the media - knowing about them would just spoil everything. Rey’s sure her grandfather would approve of the match, somehow, and that only makes the thought of discovery less appealing. From what she understands of Ben’s family’s history, there’s a definite chance they’d reject her outright, which is… something she can deal with, but also something that would anger Ben. 

Rey likes to think she’s a good enough person never to mention it, but when they did discuss all of this, she saw something flicker in Ben’s eyes.

She felt something flicker in her own heart, too, but if she likes to think she’s good enough to pretend for his sake, she can believe that she’s strong enough for her own to ignore that echoing wrench.

Somewhere during her musing, Ben seems to have gotten a similar idea about avoiding the limelight - he’s disappeared. 

Rey huffs and drains her glass, sparing a mutinous glance over at his mother, who, to her credit, is scanning the room in search of her son as though she really is worried about his absence. It’s just unfortunate that that’s the least helpful thing she could be doing, right now.

Soon, General Amidala gives up with a sigh, and turns her attention back to her brother. Rey takes that as a cue to make her own move. 

Pushing off from the wall, Rey pauses and checks for a moment - no, Vice-Chancellor Palpatine is sequestered halfway back towards the door, giving a pair of seriously-nodding Corellian magnates the usual warmly paternal, devoted-to-the-cause routine (implied: why would he have remained in such a demanding role at his age, if not for his commitment to doing right by The People?). Rey hates that she’s never been able to tell for _certain_ what his exact brand of suspicious is, let alone what his own, personal policies are; she’s not sure if anyone knows what Sheev Palpatine’s real agenda is besides Sheev Palpatine himself, and there’s no way he’d reveal it either by accident to an amateur sleuth in his household, or deliberately to someone possessing so tenuous a connection with him as shared blood. 

Even though her grandfather's occupied, Rey turns her face away from him as she weaves through the crowd. She can’t shake the feeling that no matter how hard she tries to act casual, some of her own shiftiness might still show, were she to catch his attention. 

Sheev Palpatine knows people in a way that unsettles Rey. On the rare occasions that she manages to overhear a discussion with his associates, should the topic of conversation ever turn to an individual, then it’s as though he’s verbally stripping away their skin, exposing the beating, vulnerable heart beneath. 

Rey is so caught up in her memory of such ghoulish conversation that she walks headlong into Finn. 

“Hey.” He clasps her forearms as she pulls away, mumbling an apology. “You okay? This looks like a ‘the bastard got to me’ mood if I ever saw one.”

“I’m fine, it’s not…” Rey heaves in a breath, and tells herself it’s only to ease away the shock of slamming into someone. “... Maybe it is, a bit.”

“Yeah? Where is he?” 

Finn’s head snaps around to scan the room. He looks as though he’s spoiling for a fight, and the pretense that he might actually go through with it - a private joke from their childhood - is enough to make Rey snort with laughter. More than once, the thing to get her through an audience with her grandfather was imagining Finn striding up out of nowhere and decking Sheev in the face. 

It would be _incredibly_ satisfying to watch, especially if it were to happen here. Unfortunately, it would also get Finn at least an overnight detainment - even with his parents standing by to bail (ha) him out, one doesn’t punch the Vice-Chancellor of the Galactic Senate without suffering consequences. 

Apparently spotting her grandfather, Finn shoots a last dirty look over Rey’s shoulder, before tugging her between a trio of gossiping Togruta and out of Sheev Palpatine’s line of sight. 

“Listen, Finn, I can’t stick around long. I have to”- 

“Gotta find Tall, Dark and Grumpy, huh?”

“I”- Rey blinks. Finn smiles, equal parts mischief and triumph. 

“You don’t know that.” She tries to mimic Ben’s earlier trick, drawing herself upright in full. He had more height to work with, sadly; Finn only tilts his head to the side, unimpressed. 

“I do now.”

Rey glares in mostly-fake outrage. Finn flicks her nose. She goes for his foot with one of her own in retaliation, and he dances backwards. 

“Give me some credit, yeah? You think _I_ can’t tell when you’re in sneak mode?” 

Well, that’s fair. Out of everyone in this room, Finn’s the first of only two people to have learned what Rey looks like when she’s creeping about, usually seeking escape. 

That’s how she found him - roaming backstreets one day, in search of something to do. 

In hindsight, dropping down nearly on top of him from a gutter overhead was never the most carefully thought-out of introductions, but Finn’s long forgiven her by now. She thinks. 

And… after watching him from a distance for half a day, Rey had just wanted _so badly_ to be friends. He'd been even more full, then, of the wariness that came from living parentless and alone: grubby and twitchy and shiny on the inside, in a way that nobody save another wandering kid would really bother to look at. 

Rey had looked; and so had the ageing Organas, once she'd dragged Finn back to their Coruscant home, announcing him with all of her mustered seven-year-old stubbornness. She supposes his anxiety won't have been helped by the acquisition of two increasingly elderly parents who refuse to acknowledge their years, but he bears it almost as comfortably as he does his love for them. 

As much as she can, Rey tries not to envy him. 

That guilt, however, doesn’t mean that he’ll get away with any of this. 

“You think _I_ can’t tell _you’ve_ wasted the whole night, so far, on trying to talk yourself into chatting up Colonel Bey’s son?”

“Wha- that’s- at least I’m not planning on, y’know, keeping _almost everything_ secret about us!” Finn catches himself just a little too late and Rey bites her lip which, judging by his warning glare, is completely ineffective at hiding her amusement. “If it. Gets to that point. And if I could even _find_ him.”

Finn probably wouldn’t believe her at the moment, but when Rey opens her mouth it really, genuinely is to say something encouraging - and only a little bit backhanded, because she’s not quite done being avenged yet for the tricked-into-letting-her-plans-slip thing.

He doesn’t give her the chance. “Ah! No! This isn’t about me. You can… kriff, I can’t believe I’m doing this, but you can say whatever you want later, _if_ things work out, so at least I’ll have that going for me even if my best friend is being heartless and giving me shit instead of support.”

“You say that like it’s not my job to give you both in equal amounts.”

“Changing the subject. Again.” Finn folds his arms and Rey adjusts her hopes for this conversation from _nonexistent_ to _quick_ , because she does still want to find Ben before he… flaps off, or vanishes in a puff of smoke, or whatever tricks Force-users are capable of, but almost never seem to utilise for sensible purposes. 

Such as avoiding discussions like this one. 

“Finn… look, whatever it is about him that worries you, it probably applies to me, as well. Just keep that in mind, okay? There’s a reason that we’re”- 

“You remember what it was like where you found me, yeah? When you were _seven years old_? I know you can handle yourself, Rey. But - if you want to keep a secret, it’s not a great idea to sneak around with him while half the senate’s hanging about.”

Rey blinks; watches Finn, who just stares at her expectantly for several seconds. “... Yeah, you’re right. That makes sense for, you know. Being sensible.”

Finn sighs. “But?”

“But me and Ben didn’t exactly end up where we are by being sensible. And I like where we are. It’s... fun.”

Perhaps she could’ve phrased that better - Finn looks in half a mind to pull a face, as he contemplates potential meanings. 

The other half wins out, though, and he watches Rey with that signature, almost irritatingly understanding expression of his. She hates that she’s about to start explaining things, even while being appropriately irritated, but - well. Who else can she tell about this?

“You know I can’t do all… this.” Rey waves a hand around the hall, encompassing the vague ephemera of precarious, too-personal democracy. “I was supposed to learn, when they brought me here, same as you had to - but I couldn’t. And you’re better at it than me, but if you weren’t, Bail and Breha would understand.” 

She doesn’t have to say, He _wouldn’t_. 

“Ben gets that. He’s had the same problem, and… honestly, pulling this off under their noses feels like a victory. Even if it’s stupid.” 

Rey can feel herself shrinking inward as she tries to get the next part out, hands clutching at the fabric of her beautiful, flimsy, uncomfortable dress. Somehow, she’s spilling her guts in the heart of enemy territory, because Finn hadn’t thought to corner her about all of this until she slipped up a step, in the worst possible location for his sudden concern to manifest - and once she’s started, it’s not as though she can scoop the admissions back into her brain. May as well keep going.

“Anyway, we know it’s a _when_ , not an _if_ someone catches us. And we know when that happens, we… end. But _this_ wasn’t really supposed to happen in the first place, and the fallout will be the same wherever we’re caught - so what does it matter, right? It’s not like we’re just going to stop. That’d be the sensible thing to do.”

Fingers digging into the flesh beneath the fabric by now, Rey manages a wry smile up at Finn. A ghost of the girl who swung into his life with her ferocity as-yet unshaken. 

It’s still _there_ , of course - but now it’s more of a desperate thing, clinging to defiance and disobedience like a lifeline, as much as something to revel in. Bizarrely, it comes less naturally, sits more uneasily, the more it starts to look like the only thing she has left. It certainly can’t last forever in Sheev Palpatine’s dissecting presence, turned ever more frequently towards her nowadays. 

Ben’s lent her some of his own power from that vein, for a time, and she thinks Finn might understand that much. She _knows_ he must understand the concept of leaning on someone who’s just a little less depleted than you are. 

And still, every time they go down to the brawling pits - especially standing back to back, improvised weapons in hand - Ben and Rey like to fool themselves that they could take on the world, if they wanted. 

She doesn’t know how much of _that_ will get through to Finn, without her saying it aloud. His sense of self-preservation has always been a very inward-looking beast, one she recognises from her own earliest days, where the only currency and cost that mattered was survival. They share the experience of being removed from that equation and placed in a (materially, at least) more comfortable one. Somewhere along the way, Rey’s rage turned a little outward, if no less self-serving; Finn’s didn’t. 

Which, she supposes, is why he can’t see the appeal of someone like Ben. 

Rey isn’t sure she can explain that more than she already has done, either, though judging by Finn’s dubious expression she may need to try at some point. 

Just… not here. Apparently, running up against a rock wall of earnest incomprehension is enough to stem the rushing tide of her confession. Rey chews the inside of her lip, knowing that she at least won't be spitting out anything else she doesn't want to - though what she doesn't know is how Finn will take her reticence. 

Finn - forcibly, it looks like - blinks away his confusion, hardening his stare until Rey understands that the explanation is now a given, for some point down the line. She nods.

The tradeoff, of course, is that when she mutters something about having seen Bey Jr. hovering around the Amidalas, adding just the tiniest teasing smile, Finn acquiesces; letting Rey go and moving on his own way with just a parting squeeze to her shoulder. 

They’ll come back around to it all eventually. Rey can never know for sure what it is to have a family and not a facsimile, but she imagines it must be something like this. 

She tries to keep track of Finn as she weaves through the crowd, but her trajectory complicates things: in order to give her grandfather as wide a berth as possible, she’s back to hugging the walls, and the object of Finn’s affection is right at the centre of the room. At the very least, Rey’s able to determine that her friend actually is heading that way, and hasn’t chickened out - which means there’ll be a _story_ waiting for her later, no matter how things go down. 

Right now, though, Rey is far more interested in the man who, hopefully, is still waiting for her while she searches for him.

Being a relative unknown to everyone save a smattering of Palpatine’s confidantes - as much as anyone could be called that - she’s able to slip out through the main doors without so much as a curious glance in her direction, let alone calls of her name or entreaties to greet someone she _simply must_ make the acquaintance of. 

Small mercies. 

Instead, she gains the peace of the hallway unhindered by social interaction. Rey isn't actually sure who this… _place_ belongs to, nor what to actually call it; 'apartment', while accurate in an architectural sense, is an inept sort of label when the corridors have enough width and ceiling clearance that you could comfortably fly an X-wing down them. Her grandfather’s penthouse gives her similar problems but that, at least, is a space she’s used to. 

The only thing Rey knows for certain is that whoever owns this property has never had to contemplate mortality staring them down in the dregs of a ration pack; the frigid blue light of a midnight in the desert; a shadowy, hulking figure in an alley on their periphery. 

It’s funny, really, because - neither has Ben. He grew up in all of this from the earliest, yet somehow Rey’s never been bothered by that knowledge, exempting him from her general contempt for this little world in a way she affords to so few of its other inhabitants. The Organas are the obvious example, having bothered, where nobody else did, to actually take notice of the scrawny girl who stuck out like a sore little finger in the Vice-Chancellor’s mansion, seeing her as more than a sudden curiosity. And later on, of course, having taken in Finn. 

Ben has no such deeds to his name, and he’s more than capable of being an absolute shit, but when she thinks about him Rey feels a complete absence of her usual brand of derision. Not an absence of anything, by any means - just the one thing that really ought to be present in her chest if she’s contemplating the house of Amidala’s useless youngest scion. 

Rey could lie to herself and say well, that’s because she knows he’s not useless - he’s damn good in a fight, whether the weapons to hand are honed, improvised, or simple elbows, fists and teeth. She tries, sometimes, to simplify it in those sorts of terms, and always ends up feeling the tug of something deeper that she can’t quantify. It perhaps reveals itself, now and then, in the way Ben’s eyes go hard and flinty when he doesn’t realise she’s watching; in the unnatural tension he carries everywhere with him. 

Your average layabout socialite doesn’t comport themselves like they’re constantly dragging a weight behind them. The only thing comparable Rey’s ever seen is in herself and Finn, and she desperately wants to know _why_ she finds it mirrored in Ben. 

But they don’t really have that kind of relationship. 

And fretting about it now will only increase the odds of Ben assuming she’s not coming after him, and skulking off into the night. 

Shaking herself mentally, Rey’s eyes comb the corridor - as though he might have left a scrap of expensive black fabric snagged on a wall sconce, or a leading half footprint on the spotless, shining floor. If nothing else, it helps her get into the right mindset. 

_You’re Ben Amidala, you’re three thousand feet up in the air, and you desperately want to escape a fog of small talk. Where do you go?_

The answer arrives in her mind almost before she has time to reach for it. 

_Where the air is clearer._

Not to mention potentially deadly, of course, at this altitude - but on the one hand, that’s what energy shielding is for when you’re this rich. On the other, Rey isn’t sure Ben would care overmuch even if that weren’t the case. 

His profile, when she checks the second balcony along, is as relaxed as Rey’s ever seen it, so she assumes both that she was correct, and that the fresh air actually has done him some good. For Ben, though, the word ‘relaxed’ only ever stretches so far; she makes sure, as she approaches, to step more heavily than feels natural, her feet tapping a staccato heartbeat against the floor. 

Still, never let it be said that she actually goes easy on him. As Ben turns, Rey’s already reaching, grabbing fistfuls of that heavy, gleaming fabric and dragging him down into a kiss. Ben's arms encircle her on instinct and for a split second they sway, unbalanced - before she redoubles, catching his upper lip with her teeth, and he pushes forward with a gasp, so hard and desperately that her back arches out of its leftover anxious ramrod set. They're counterbalances of unstoppable force and it _works_ ; keeps them suspended in moments intense enough to blot out the watching world. 

_This_ is what she needs right now. 

* * *

Call him stupid, but Ben hadn’t realised how much he needed this until Rey actually kissed him. 

In a way, he’s angry at himself for running in the first place - his mother will want answers, later, that he’s unable to give, and everyone else will break out the usual spectrum of exasperated-to-pitying expressions… and why, in the name of the Force, does he think it’s worth dwelling on any of this when Rey’s hand is twisting into his hair?

So he stops. 

To the level of Ben’s brain that’s purely selfish and grasping (and, honestly, a few others besides), this is the best thing about Rey: a single frisson shock of fingers clutching at skin, a gleam in a warm, dark eye, or a flash of teeth, and his whole world pulls in towards that point. No thought, no uncertainty. The near-constant thrum of unease disperses like morning mist in a desert. 

Right now, it’s the simultaneous tug of fingers at the nape of his neck, and lips pressed against his hard enough to bruise. Rey bites; he bites back on instinct. Once she licks into his mouth, he retains just enough awareness to tighten his arms around her, sliding one upwards to steady her shoulder, and after that - that’s it. No more sense, no surroundings, just Rey’s hands, Rey’s mouth, Rey’s voice making tiny noises. Just Rey. 

Which is why, when she finally pulls back, Ben tries to follow - and can’t quite hold in the quiet groan that escapes him. Rey slips from his grasp while he’s distracted still trying to kiss her, breathing raggedly as she steps away; but what bothers Ben is that she seems to be deliberately avoiding meeting his eyes. 

He reaches for her and she twists to the side, hands tangled in her hair, trying to pull it down from its severe knot. She still hasn’t said anything.

“Rey, what”- 

It’s not like Ben’s expecting her to pour her heart out, but… he’s the one who ran off. The last he saw her, she’d been on fine form, trying to make the best of a situation neither of them wanted to find themselves in. 

If Rey can sometimes hurt to look at when fully inhabiting a reason to fight, at the height of her power and fury, she’s the opposite of that now. The anger is turned inwards, spilling out haphazardly if it does at all, instead of aimed like a controlled blaze. 

Her hair descends down her back in a loose scribble, and she tears the cloak from her shoulders - then presses straight back into Ben, her face to his chest where he can’t see it. 

"I wish we weren't here," Rey mumbles. "Whose place even is this, anyway?" 

"Senator Berik's." Ben's response is instant, automatic - when you've been failing to do anything worthwhile with yourself for a decade or so, you end up actually listening to your mother far past the point where you were supposed to stop. "Don't ask me what planet he's from, I've got no idea. I _can_ tell you that he's a bastard."

"Aren't they all, more or less?" asks Rey, and Ben wants to speak up in defence of Luke, of his grandparents, their friends - but he isn't quite sure how to do that without sounding like the usual sycophants. His hand lifts, almost unconsciously, to card through Rey's hair. 

"I think… some of them are trying," he says, hesitantly. "But if most of them don't care, that won't make much difference." _Not when their leader insists on being_ so _kriffing principled, anyway._

Rey looks up at him, something in her eyes turning faintly, suddenly impish; her fingers clasp together at the back of his neck.

"You've never tried _making a difference_ yourself?"

She's smiling, she can't possibly know - and why would she? Ben's never told her. Besides, it's been a decade; his half-hearted attempt to shoulder the family business must have happened before Rey properly understood who her grandfather is, so she wouldn't have heard about it at the time. 

The crushing futility and self-doubt is far from a phenomenon that Ben experiences exclusively in the world of the Senate, but it’s definitely at its strongest whenever he finds himself pulled into his grandmother’s orbit. He was supposed to do great things - as an Amidala, a Skywalker, the heir to a prestigious dynasty and immense power in the Force - and in the end… he couldn’t. Something inside him just never seemed to reach far enough. 

Now, walking in his family’s wake, the shape he was supposed to fit into there refuses to change: dead space looming around him, of a height with Leia the venerated warrior and her golden brother Luke. 

Perhaps Han could have been more of a help, if Ben had just decided to be ordinary from the start. Sure, his father is far from _ordinary_ now, but he at least began in a different way. A less expectant one.

“Ben?”

“I did,” he grits out. “Wasn’t for me.”

Rey snorts. “Obviously. I’d never have even seen you, if you’d decided to swan about with all the others in the Senate chamber.” 

“I’ll count myself lucky, then.” Ben’s trying for dry wit, but he knows he’s failed watching the way Rey worries at her lower lip. He wonders, not for the first time or even the hundredth, how long they can keep pretending to hold each other at arm’s length. 

And how he’ll cope, when one of the few people to ever see value in who Ben actually is decides that things have gotten difficult enough, and he needs casting off. 

He doesn’t doubt Rey’s strong enough to weather the detachment; she’s been hyper-vigilant, all along, about the idea of Palpatine discovering them, so she’s certainly prepared for the eventuality. She has Organa for support - one of the few things she’s shared about her childhood being that she basically adopted Finn by force, and Finn in turn decided to be fiercely protective. She doesn’t trust Ben’s family, he knows that much, so distancing herself from them will be a weight off her shoulders. 

All Ben can do is take what is given to him while it lasts. 

In an effort to stop Rey looking at him like _that_ , Ben leans down and kisses her again. He moves more softly than she did; perhaps, on another day, he’d be coming to her frustrated from a confrontation with his parents, or a function he’d been forced to attend without Rey’s presence as consolation. 

On those sort of days, he’s capable of giving as good as he gets, but tonight… he’d come out here because he wanted to shut himself off from that anger, lest its claws rip into his own flesh. 

Rey just being here is an excellent help where that’s concerned, and right now she’s the one balancing on the same knife’s edge. Ben can tell - could tell, even if he didn’t already know it - by the frantic way her hands reach for him, the slight forcedness of her too-tightly-shut eyes. 

After a minute or so being content to just float, overwhelmed by sensation, Ben becomes distantly aware that Rey is scrabbling at his shoulders. He pulls back just enough to nose at the skin beneath her jaw, reluctant to break their contact completely, but conscious that there’s something Rey wants to complain about. 

“Why won’t this… _thing_ come off?” she growls. 

Oh, good - it’s nothing serious, which means she won’t mind if Ben carries on kissing her neck. He mumbles “What thing?” into the dip where her shoulder begins.

“The cloak!”

“It’s not a cloak.” Rey isn’t tugging at the fabric quite so much anymore; she’s distracted, hands slackening, since he nipped at the lobe of her ear. “Not really. A lot of it’s all part of the same piece - I’ll be walking around half naked if you want it off me.”

“And that would be a bad thing because...?”

Her teasing doesn’t quite work - not when they each know, immediately, the same specific answer. Pretending like this is better done in their hiding spots. 

Ben draws back, the side of her face still cupped in his hand.

“We’re gonna start seeing more of each other in places like this, aren’t we.”

“If _he_ gets his way, yeah.” She’s averting her gaze again.

It’s not really an if - Sheev Palpatine _will_ get a refined little scion to parade around in front of those who matter, one way or another. Sheev Palpatine always gets what he wants, often without having to state his wish outright. 

Well. Almost always. 

There exists, of course, an exception; as is usually the case for such statements of hyperbole. 

There _was_ a time where, for a while, it seemed that Sheev Palpatine was still getting exactly what he wanted: following the invasion of Naboo and the fateful Vote of No Confidence that propelled Ben’s own grandmother onto the political stage, everyone had been certain that Palpatine meant to stand as a candidate for Chancellor in his own right. 

(Padme had been certain, anyway, and she after all had known him well at that point. Or thought she did). 

Instead, Palpatine threw himself wholeheartedly behind Mas Amedda, the then Vice-Chair. Someone, he enthused, who had lent a sympathetic ear to the plight of Naboo, and was willing to act in the planet’s interests - someone who was established, esteemed, who could unite the Senate and spur them to action over this vital cause for concern. If anyone, at the time, had pointed out that the Senator could well have been describing himself, Palpatine demurred; perhaps he might have considered it, he’d say, had it not been for recent developments that required more dedicated attention. 

Of course, any such questioners understood this. There was a planet in his care, one that despite having weathered the worst of a crisis, still needed navigating through inevitable adjustments after the fact.

He did take the post of Vice-Chair, though, when Amedda graciously nominated him: a thank-you, for his invaluable aid. 

And this all seemed to be precisely what Sheev Palpatine wanted, as though he had orchestrated the entire thing single-handedly. If he wasn’t content, he gave no outward indication whatsoever. At the very least, Padme and Anakin, who each found themselves taken under his wing to varying degrees, never knew him to be anything other than affable and utterly dedicated to his post.

Then one day, quite suddenly, Mas Amedda dropped dead. 

_Assassination_ was the word that leapt first to everyone’s lips, especially with the brewing Separatist Crisis now threatening to boil over entirely. The autopsy reported natural causes, however - and since this was the Chancellor of the Galactic Senate, the investigation had been thorough. Any fingers that might initially have pointed at Palpatine quickly checked themselves and withdrew. 

His campaign for the vacant seat gave a large part of itself over to honouring the legacy of his good friend and staunch ally, who had once provided such sorely needed aid. 

Again, it seemed as though the opportunity to follow in Amedda’s footsteps would simply fall into his lap; but in the flurry surrounding the tragedy that had enabled this coup, Sheev Palpatine had lost sight of someone. 

Someone, perhaps, whom he did not consider terribly important, in the scheme of things, despite their shared heritage and the fact that he’d mentored her through assuming his old Senate seat. 

Padme Amidala, with half a short lifetime’s experience in politics already under her belt, had decided that she could not sit idly, nor refrain from at least attempting to affect change in her own right. She knew that her chosen course of action would mean going toe to toe with an old ally - but the operative word was _old_ , the most venerated and venerable Senators in general being of a sort who preferred to rock the boat as little as possible. No matter that a storm raged around them. 

And somehow (the _somehow_ being a network of genuinely astonishing size, woven between representatives of lesser-regarded planets, who both feared the terminal point of the Senate’s current course and were largely unused to being listened to) - Padme Amidala got her way. 

This is what Ben knows from old news broadcasts, and the occasional reminiscence of his grandparents. He’s not sure if Rey has even that much of the story; whether it’s something she’d have been encouraged to learn about is dubious. Palpatine’s motivations, Ben understands, are often entirely opaque until they manifest in results. Perhaps he wouldn’t want his granddaughter - a useful pawn, a useful person to keep mostly on-side - hearing about the one time he failed to live up to that legend. 

The things Ben doesn’t know, though, are the ones that really trouble him. There exists a strange tension between Padme Amidala, Sheev Palpatine, and Anakin Skywalker, and while most of the galaxy quite likes their senate’s Vice-Chair, and the Chancellor must be outwardly cooperative with her second, things witnessed behind closed doors make Ben suspect that this is even more of an act than is usual in politics. 

If there’s one thing he’s definitely privy to, that the press is not, it’s that nobody within the Amidala-Skywalker clan really trusts Palpatine. 

_Any_ Palpatine, unfortunately. 

Once again, Ben finds himself wondering about childhood _if_ s - if any one member of his own family had taken it upon themselves to visit the Vice-Chair at home, even for five minutes, they’d doubtless have noticed Rey. Put it down to what you liked: Padme and Luke’s inherent belief in Doing The Right Thing; Leia’s yet-lingering detective instincts for gremlins liable to cause trouble (honed as much by Poe Dameron as by Ben himself, and undergoing a metamorphosis at the time into a knack for detecting hellions like she’d once been instead); or, perhaps, Anakin and Han’s shared ability to recognise little scraps being starved for something or other. The crucial thing is that Rey might have been seen before she stopped looking so lost and unknowing. So innocent. 

Now, if anything, she must look like a co-conspirator. 

Of any possible outcome that might materialise, Ben wants the one where Rey is safest - though safe _r_ might be the best he can realistically hope for, and even then odds are slim on it coming to pass. Certainly while the two of them still stand where they do. 

“Isn’t there”- Ben swallows, knowing he runs the risk of Rey becoming incredibly cagey, if he continues. 

“Don’t you have… anyone. Any people you could stay with? He’s not your legal guardian anymore, you’d just need someone with money who could”- 

_I could_ , he wants to say, but something holds him back. Something that feels shamefully close to fear - and yet, it doesn’t entirely stem from the fears they’ve discussed. Instinctually, perhaps genetically, knowing his family history, the idea of directly crossing Palpatine is more daunting than Ben expects to find it. 

And yet Rey, braver than him, has to do just that every day. 

She doesn’t look particularly emboldened now, though; not with downcast, distant eyes, and two fingers playing listlessly with the embellishment on the shoulder of his robe. Glancing out momentarily towards what little night sky is visible between the peaks of towers, Rey sighs, then speaks. 

“Do you know where I was living, before he dragged me here?”

Ben makes a negative sort of noise - not wanting to interrupt and spook her out of talking.

“Jakku,” says Rey, “isn’t on the Outer Rim or anything, but it’s… remote. And barren, more or less. Nobody really goes there by choice, unless they’re running away from something - and if you’re in that situation, you don’t really have much of a choice in the first place.”

Without warning, she lets herself fall forwards, leaning into Ben’s shoulder - he almost stumbles, but catches himself just in time. 

“I don’t know why my parents ran, and I don’t know why I ended up on Jakku. But I sometimes think the only thing I _need_ to know is that he found me. Even all the way out there. I” - She swallows - “I’d technically been bought by someone, when I arrived. His name was Unkar Plutt. I’m sure he could have been much worse, but he was still pretty awful; I remember wishing every night that my parents would come back and fetch me away. And my wish sort of came true, didn’t it? If it wasn’t my parents, I got a team of mercenaries and bounty hunters hired by my grandfather. 

“They didn’t bother offering Plutt his money back, or anything like that. They just gunned him down, on sight. Never mind that their target was six years old and watching them the whole time.”

Hesitantly, Ben wraps his arm around her. Rey almost seems like she’s going to shove him away, yet for some reason at the last second she checks herself, instead only twisting until she can finally meet Ben’s eyes. 

“There’s nowhere I could hide on this planet without him dragging me back somehow. Maybe not even in the whole galaxy. I know you were thinking about the Organas, but I won’t do that to them. And - I’ve thought about just waiting for him to die, but…”

But Palpatine should have been dead for years already, by the laws of nature. 

It’s certainly become a thing that’s whispered about, though not nearly as widely as you might expect. He does, after all, command immense wealth and power - of anyone who might leverage that for access to medical advancements and an uncannily extended lifespan, Sheev Palpatine is high on the list of people who would actually follow through. 

“He has his medical droids killed,” Rey murmurs, reading Ben’s mind. “I don’t think he wants anyone knowing how weak he must be.”

Once more her fist closes on Ben’s robe, tighter this time, needing more than just an assurance that she won’t tip sideways. 

“He _has_ to be, by now, right?”

At the thought, something rears up in Ben’s chest and he blurts out - 

“So you think he could... be killed?”

He hears the catch in Rey’s breath, sees her eyes widen in shock - before they narrow, contemplatively. He feels her whole frame hardening, drawing in on itself like a predator making ready to spring. 

She’s thinking about it. 

Ben can tell that course of action hadn’t occurred to her at all, before he put the idea into her mind; he remembers the time she’d insisted that the _threat_ of cutting off a limb was enough, but that she could absolutely make good if need be. The next time she was given a chance to prove it, she simply sliced her opponent’s arm open instead. 

Rey is not gentle, but she’s always been the kinder of them both. Ben suspects that he may be a violent man right down to his very heart - he’s certainly always been followed by a knowledge of _exactly what_ he could do to any person who ignites his temper. Seeing Rey take some of that knowledge into herself, realising that he’s affected the visible change that’s come over her… imagining how this might enable one of them, at least, to cast off their burdens…

An answering spark to the one in Rey’s eyes flares somewhere deep within Ben, equal parts trepidation and thrill. 

“You know,” says Rey suddenly - and Ben tries not to jump. “This might be _the_ worst place to discuss an assassination plot against the Vice-Chancellor.”

“Well…” Ben, for some reason, finds himself smiling. “I think a worse place would probably be back in the main room, in actual earshot of the target. And if we’re being honest, it’s not really a _plot_ yet.”

_Yet._

He doesn’t know how to feel about the way that word makes Rey’s eyes burn brighter still. 

In a bid to distract them both from the dangerous territory they’ve just crossed into, Ben kisses Rey one more time. She drapes her arms down his back languidly, and he supposes he’s grateful at least that the tension she carried earlier has dissipated. It’s hard to feel guilty about that part. 

It’s harder to accept that half of him doesn’t want to feel _guilty_ about any of it. 

“... Maybe we should get out of here,” he murmurs, trying for normalcy, as Rey pulls back a fraction to breathe. “I might not know what planet Berik’s from, but I _do_ know where he keeps his collection of vintage speeders.”

When she pushes back into the kiss, he feels her grin in the sting of her teeth. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So - in keeping with the others in the series, this was SUPPOSED to be about a thousand words long. It clearly is not that. Honestly, the damn thing just kept growing and growing, the more I thought about the premise of the story, and how much plot wrangling was required to make it make sense - and then I couldn't not put the plot wrangling into the actual fic, because plot jigsaws are my favourite so I tend to erroneously assume that everyone else wants to hear about them too.
> 
> But yeah, the almost 8k word count is why this took so bloody long to be posted. Sorry, Francesca!
> 
> (Also, for those interested: one thing I couldn't fit in is that I think Sheeb had some sort of a hand in Rey's parents running away to Jakku in the first place. Whether he pushed them, or made it possible for them to finally make a break, or just let it happen once he realised what was going on, having Rey absent due to kidnapping for a couple of years actually would have helped his agenda. She wasn't around anyway, and then once she was back, he could cite grandfatherly concern and insist on hiding her away in his home for a few years more - by which time, she'd be well and truly past the age where she might ping the Jedi's radar as a potential Padawan. And so he keeps control of a potentially useful asset, and prevents his family's force-sensitivity being revealed, or suspicion falling on him as that sensitivity's source).


End file.
